


The Best Disguise

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, Seduction, Swimming, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 03:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She's not drunk.





	The Best Disguise

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Watershed (5 x 24), or I suppose, after the cold open of Valkyrie (6 x 01).

 

Naked is the best disguise

— Jeannette Winterson

 

* * *

She’s not drunk, not at all, though the day’s been filled with endless sips of cool things. Crisp white wine that he’s pressed into her hand, even as he lets her taste it on his own lips.  Sweating red cups filled with icy–sweet things she’s sampled and set aside in favor of a dive into the pool, or huddling up for another picture with Lanie, with the boys, with Gates and her husband, because everyone’s here. _Everyone,_ and that’s what she’s really drunk on: The stupid, wonderful impossibility of a long weekend with _everyone_ in the middle of all this. 

It’s an engagement party and a send off for her. It’s a celebration and a few stolen days spent with everyone she loves. It’s a pause amidst all these headlong changes, and he’s the one who made it happen, of course. He’s the one who cajoled and bullied and wouldn’t take no for an answer, not from her and not from anyone. He’s the one who’s fixed it so she hasn’t had a moment’s guilt. Not a moment’s uncertainty that she ought to be doing something else.

That’s what she’s drunk on. The whole of it. That’s what she’s riding the wave of when inspiration strikes. Because the house is empty now. Everyone else has pointed themselves homeward with fierce hugs and well wishes. Promises that so little will change, she’ll hardly even notice she’s 200 miles from a decent slice.

Now it’s just the two of them, rambling around for one last evening before she needs to well and truly throw herself into the current of this enormous change. It’s just the two of them, and she’s drunk on that, too. Not melancholy or fretful or half somewhere else entirely. She’s loose and present, joyful and inspired. 

She slips down to the wine cellar and grabs the first thing that catches her eye. She shivers at the contrast of the the cool, curving glass of the bottle pressing against the sun-toasted skin of her thigh.

She races on tip toe up the back staircase. God knows it’d be easy enough to evade a Mongol Horde in the wings and winding hallways of a house this size, but he has a knack for sniffing her out, here, there, and everywhere, and she’s having none of that right now. She has plans to execute.

He’s not in the bedroom. He’s not singing in the shower or lounging out on the balcony, lost in a book, with his feet propped on the railing and a long-forgotten drink languishing at his side. For once, he’s not underfoot just when she doesn’t want him to be.

She stands in the middle of the huge room, clutching the bottle of wine like a surprise Oscar winner. She thinks about a shower. About silhouette and scent. Carefully smoothed skin and calculated seduction, but she’s laughing before the thought has a chance even to take a turn through her mind. It’s not the point—washing the day away—that’s not the point of this at all.

It takes her a minute to dig out what she’s looking for.She huffs and grumbles, smiling all the while as it dawns on her how much she’s managed to accumulate here in the space of less than a year, but she comes up with it. The blue and white terry cover-up and the silly gold sandals she’d blushed, but bought anyway, back in the early fall. She comes up with it, exactly what she’s looking for.

* * *

She finds him on the porch. The ocean-side porch, sitting on the steps with his chin lifted and his gaze fixed on the grassy rise that hides the water from view. It’s perfect. It should be perfect, but she falters. For the first time, something about the tableau of him makes her falter. 

“Castle?” She curses silently and clutches the bundle of towels and the canvas wine tote closer. She never meant for anything tonight to be a question. 

He fixes it, though. He turns, instantly drawn to the sound of her voice, with a lazy, open smile. With a hand reaching up toward her, he fixes it. “Hey, where’d you get to?”

“Here now.” She twines the fingers of her free hand through his.

The thought flits through her mind that it might’ve been a weighted statement. It might’ve been some kind of awkward, leaden punctuation putting an end to everything he’s carved out for her—for them—in the space of a few impossible days. It’s not, though. She draws him up, he draws her in, and it’s nothing like that.

“What’s this?” His arm slides around her waist. The gap between their bodies closes, and he nods down at her cargo.

“A plan.” She smiles up at him. “A scheme.”

“Oooh.” He slides a whispering kiss along her jawline, just across her lips. “I love a good scheme.”

“I know.” She’s calling out to him now. She’s unfurling herself from his arms and leading him onward. She’s leading him through the tall beach grass and down the gentle swell of the hill to where the water gently laps at the sand.

“A beach scheme!” He slips the strap of the wine tote from her shoulder, waggling his eyebrows. He feels around for the corkscrew. For the sturdy stemless glasses tucked into the sides of the tote. “Excellent thinking, Detective-soon-to-be-Agent.”

“Ah ah ah!” She stops him. She tugs the wine away from him, forcing the bundle of towels into his arms in the same motion. “An ocean scheme.” She backs away from him, one step, then two. Long, deliberate backward strides that hike the cover-up high on her hips. “Wine later.”

“Ocean.” He looks down at his shorts and schlubby t-shirt. He drags his gaze slowly up the length of her body. “Not exactly dressed for it.”

She laughs up at the waning moon. She laughs up at the stars, thanking them and who or whatever might be listening for an opening line more perfect than any she could have written herself.

She lets the wine fall softly to the sand. She twitches at the braided sash of her cover-up and rolls her shoulders back to let it fall. She bares herself to the night. To him and the welcome flare of heat behind his eyes.

“Me neither.” She steps into his arms. She tugs at his shirt. At button and zipper and everything that stands between her and what she wants. What she most decidedly will have. “Me neither, Castle."

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I felt weird about what I posted for May Thing a Month, so I intended to try to finish one of the near-finished things I’d been poking around all month. So, obviously, I wrote something entirely different today.


End file.
